Occupy Oakland: It’s just a flag
Read Time:4 Minute, 3 Second
Since sharing this photo with my friends, the responses have ranged from outright anger to dismay to defense to a firm belief that the young men setting fire to our flag are working for James O’Keefe.
I’ve seen the young men in the photo, one of whom is grinning from ear to ear as our national standard goes up in flames, called heroes by the same progressives who call our soldiers murderers and baby killers.
Hey, progressives? This is not Vietnam, sweethearts. This isn’t the Civil Rights Movement, this isn’t the Equal Rights Movement. Maybe Occupy started out with good intentions, but it’s basically a big camp out now. College kids walked out on their educations, and in 6 months will complain that they can’t find a job, and blame the banks, or President Obama.
But back to the burning of the American flag. I had one friend (an actual friend, not one of the 400 Face book “acquaintances” I will lose after this article is published) tell me that as much as he may disapprove of the message, men and women fought and died for those young men’s right to burn the symbol of our country, and he’s right. But I don’t believe my friends in the Army Reserves, or my ancestors who fought in the American Revolution and the Civil War fought so some assholes lighting the flag on fire could be called “heroes”.
Erin! You’re a liberal, you’re one of the 99%, these brave, heroic young men are fighting for YOU! They lit the flag your ancestors fought for, your friends died for, to show the tyranny and the war mongering and the fascism! Ya da ya da ya da. America is not a fascist country, sorry Alex Jones minions. America is not a tyrannical system. Ask Cambodians who survived Pol Pot what a tyrant is. Ask Libyans. Ask Iranians, but wait, you can’t, because odds are, if they speak out against their government, they’ll be killed.
You want to be angry and rage against the system? Get people registered to vote, volunteer to take back the House, get President Obama reelected. Occupy is the right’s dream come true: a bunch of laissez faire kids, burning the flag, railing against the system that allows them the luxury OF burning our flag and preaching anarchy and non participation in the voting process. I’m sorry, how is that helpful?
I’ve never been a big fan of OWS. And I got hammered for it. Picked up an Internet stalker, a liberal, who threatened me. All because it turns out that if you don’t goosestep to the progressive agenda, you deserve to be called a bitch, a c**t, a fake liberal, a traitor to “the cause”, a moron, an idiot and, my personal favorite, a Koch whore.
My friend, Robert Applebaum, is an attorney fighting against the massive machine that is student loans. He’s been interviewed on radio programs, created numerous petitions and received national attention for his noble efforts. That’s how you fight. You use your head and the tools available to you to create change and better the country. You don’t light the American flag on fire. You don’t give the far right more ammunition, you give them less. I fight, every day, with words. Robert fights with petitions and press releases and he is succeeding. My friend Steve Snyder Hill and his husband, Joshua, are fighting DOMA by joining a lawsuit aimed at allowing gay members of the military the same rights afforded heterosexual couples. Oh, about Steve and Josh.
When Steve, a captain in the Army Reserves, was in Iraq, he and Josh were on the phone one morning. Suddenly, Josh heard a huge bang in the background, and Steve said “I think that was a mortar, I have to go.” Click. Josh had no idea when, or even if, he would speak to the man he loved again. That’s heroism.
My father and I visited the Vietnam Memorial quite a few years ago, and I stood silently as he found his best friend’s name on the Wall. I watched my dad put his hand on the name of the man who was the first person to know my mom was pregnant with me and cry. We were surrounded by bikers that day; men with grey beards and greyer hair, arms around one another, sobbing. Every one of those men wore a leather jacket with an American flag emblazoned on the back.
If men who fought in Vietnam, and lost brothers and sisters to that war, can respect and honor the American flag, what does that say about those young men gleefully setting our standard on fire? Not much, in my opinion.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
I’ve never been enamored with the OWS folk. They never had a message and never had a leader. While I admired their ideas, the movement never identified their goals or objectives. Now they’re just a bunch of nasty, noisome squatters.
Erin, Right on point. In this case it is not “just a flag.” It is the symbol that gives these people the right to protest the way they do. It is the flag I served under, in all seriousness, that to give them that right. You are right, this is not Vietnam, this is a bunch of disenchanted people who are unhappy with a part of the economic system, If they wish to change the system they need to engage it, The are disgracing those who protesting the people who were losing there lives in a useless war. They are dangerously, if not are ready over the the line, to crossing the line where even those who may have supported them are saying they have gone to far. Enough is enough. Either consolidate and form a political entity or get back to your lives.
My first thought was it was an O’Keefe deal also.
That aside, people do have a right to be fucking idiots in this country as long as they don’t hurt anything or one.
I think all people of good sense would agree these flag burners are fucking idiots.